Kaylie Prize

Program Resources

Miscellany

Sponsoring Alumni

The Kaylie IDEAS Competition, the InnoLab, and the Entrepreneurship Lecture series are made possible by the generous support of the the following City College of New York York Alums

Harvey Kaylie (EE '60)

Harvey Kaylie (CCNY EE '60) founded Mini-Circuits in 1968 in Brooklyn NY (where it is still headquartered today) selling high quality RF and microwave circuits. Mr. Kaylie is a thought leader within the communications systems community, and has received patents on various RF circuit and subsystem designs. As President of Mini-Circuits, he has provided mil-spec components at high production rates, consistently, for over 40 years. Mr. Kaylie, has given $3 million to endow the Kaylie Prize for Entrepreneurship.

Irwin Zahn (ME '48)

Mr. Zahn is founder and chief executive officer, Autosplice, Inc., an international electronic component design, product development, manufacturing and distribution company. was started in New York City in 1954, and in those early days the firm was named General Staple Company. In the years up to 1967 General Staple was a distributor (not a manufacturer) of industrial stapling machines. Our exciting growth path started in 1967 when a customer requested General Staple to build a machine that would splice two electrical wires together. This simple, innocent request would ultimately change the Company into a worldwide manufacturer of innovative interconnection machines and connectors selling to the electrical and electronic industries.

General Staple went through a succession of names, such as CONNECTRON, then CONNECTROL, and finally the present AUTOSPLICE, INC. About the same time (1968-1969) a manufacturing operation was started, then an engineering department. Finally the sales department was enlarged and AUTOSPLICE began to move.

Some years later management noted that the single largest product in the field of electrical/electronic connectors was the pin and socket. This combination connector is sold in many different forms and names. It is called plug and jack, pin and receptacle, or male and female connectors--but these are the most popular products in the entire connector industry.

Aziz Ahmad (BE EE '82, ME EE '84)

Aziz Ahmad is President and CEO of UTC Associates, Inc., a company he co-founded in New York City. UTC is a leading systems and network integration company and developer of software for information technology and telecommunications applications. An accomplished businessman and network architect, Mr. Ahmad was the lead architect of AT&Ts VoIP networks. He has extensive experience in developing and rolling out new services from concept to revenue generation stage. He founded Vonair, Inc., a leading multimedia based applications provider, including VoIP client based, location-based applications, presence, instant messaging, and mobile client applications.

Mr. Ahmad is a board member of Grameen Solutions, Grameen IT Park in Bangladesh where Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus serves as the Chairman of the Board. Recently he was the recipient of First American Distinguished Alumni award of City University of New York. He holds B.E. and M.E. degrees in Electrical Engineering from The City College of New York (CUNY). During the past several years, he has served as an adjunct professor at City Technical College (CUNY), and he has also taught graduate-level courses at Pace University in converging technologies.